Mathemagician Halloween Costume

Last year, I dressed as a chemist for Halloween and sat on the porch with a table full of candy and chemistry equipment. It was so fun being more interactive with the trick-or-treaters than just opening the door and giving out candy. This year, I decided to do something similar, but with a math theme. In addition to candy, I gave out 10-sided dice and taught the kids a math game. They could have extra candy for trying the game, beating me, and/or promising to teach the game to someone else. Affiliate links below. 

Mathemagician Halloween Costume

Materials: 

• magician's top hat
• printable dice pattern
• letter and number stickers
• painter's tape
• 10-sided dice

Steps: 

I started by printing two copies of the dice pattern. I assembled one to put on top of the hat and cut the other apart to use as table decorations. While the glue was drying on the dimensional die, I used letter and number stickers to make three equations on the hat. The multiplication symbol is an x, the division symbol is a lower case i and two dots, and the equal sign is two lower case i's. I attached the die to the top of the hat using a loop of painter's tape. It held firmly all night with no issues. You could use hot glue if you're concerned about it coming off. 

A proper magician's costume would have enhanced my outfit, but I ran out of time to pull it together before Halloween. I ended up wearing all black. Since I was sitting behind a table the whole time, nobody would have seen much of the costume anyway. 

I covered the table with black fabric and decorated it with the cut-out dice. There were two bowls: one had candy and the other had dice in a rainbow of pretty colors. I also put paper and pencils on the table. 

When kids came to the table, I told them to pick out a piece of candy and a die. Then I taught them how to play Lucky Numbers. I simplified the game significantly depending on the age of the kids. For kids younger than school age, I asked them to just identify the numbers when they rolled the die, or to show me the number that matched their age. Some of the kids got really into the game and all of them were happy to be able to keep their special dice. 

Incidentally, I had a big prize set aside in case anyone (child or adult) happened to say, "560, 8, 4." Why? Because those are the answers to the equations on my hat. I thought there was a possibility that someone would spontaneously solve them and I wanted to be ready. Alas, no one did.